Note: In this brief post, I discuss a few findings I made about Michael Bruck’s ancestors since the recent publication of Post 128. Also, based on the context in which some photos sent to me by Michael and his siblings were found, I speculate as to who the individuals might have been. It’s my hope that distant members of Michael’s family, some of whom have trees on ancestry, might stumble upon this post and either confirm or rebut my suppositions.
In Post 128, I discussed the family of an American gentleman named Michael Bruck (Figure 1) whose ancestors came from west of Frankfurt, Germany, and whose German surname originally had an “umlaut” over the “u.” Michael Bruck’s great-uncle, Max Brück (1884-1942) (Figure 2), and Max’s oldest son, Eugen Kurt Brück (1920-1942) (Figure 3), both perished in Auschwitz. Their fates had previously been unknown to Michael and his siblings, although rumors circulated within the family that an unnamed uncle had “disappeared” during the Holocaust. While investigating Michael’s relatives I learned that somehow Max’s wife, Elsa Brück née Neumeyer (1890-1993), and his daughter, Hilda Ruth Nathan née Brück (1925-2018), escaped Nazi Europe and made their way to the United States to live long productive lives. As discussed in Post 128, I confirmed this in a “Geneanet Community Tree Index” I found for Max Brück. (Figure 4)
I have yet to figure out what made Elsa and Hilda’s escape to America possible while Max and Eugen Brück were unable to emigrate. From Elsa Brück’s January 1942 “Declaration of Intention” to become a U.S. citizen (Figure 5), I know she arrived in New York on the 20th of August 1941 aboard the “SS Ciudad de Sevilla” and emigrated from Barcelona, Spain. Incredulously, on this declaration, Elsa reports that her son Eugen was then “residing” in “Camps des Milles,” outside Aix-en-Provence, France. One could hardly refer to Camps des Milles as a residence since it was a temporary detention center for Jews being deported to Drancy, outside Paris, then on to Auschwitz.
Euphemisms aside, knowing that Elsa and Hilda Brück survived, I Googled them. I quickly discovered both were featured on the “Alabama Holocaust Education Center” website. (Figures 6-7) As sought after speakers on the Holocaust, they helped fulfill the Education Center’s mission of “keeping the history and lessons of the Holocaust alive.” Unlike many other German Jews who converted, they remained practicing Jews and were active in the Congregation B’nai Shalom in Huntsville, Alabama. Of particular interest to Michael and me was that Elsa’s personal page on the Education Center’s website included a picture of she and Max (Figure 8); similarly, Hilda’s personal page showed a picture of her later in life. Elsewhere, on a family tree on ancestry I discovered a heartwarming picture of Elsa Brück, also from later in life. (Figure 9)
Michael and his siblings shared other unidentified photos found among their grandfather Arthur Brück’s surviving papers. The only identification on one of the pictures is “father”; he is seated alone in this picture (Figure 10), but in an accompanying image is photographed at his marriage with a woman who is obviously his wife. Knowing Arthur’s family tree from the Community Tree Index, I surmise the photo is of Max and Arthur’s parents, Karl Simon Brück (1844-1927) and Christiane Karoline Brück née Kuhn (1854-1929). (Figure 11) The minimal identification and the context in which these photos were found is what confidently causes me to believe they are Arthur’s parents.
Michael shared another set of photographs. One picture shows a couple (Figure 12), the second the same lady alone. (Figure 13) Again, the context in which these pictures were found, and the estimated age of the photos provides a clue as to who is illustrated.
In Post 128, I discussed a picture-postcard mailed in around 1934 from Munich signed by Max Brück’s wife Elsa and their three children, Eugen (1920-1942), Werner (1922-1936), and Hilda (1925-2018). (Figures 14a-b) The card was addressed to Max Brück’s sister and brother-in-law, Selma Daniel née Brück (1886-1965) and Albert Daniel. The card was mailed to the corset factory in Saarbrücken owned by Albert Daniel. I am reasonably confident the unidentified couple are Selma and Albert Daniel.
In making these tentative identifications, it is not my intention to presumptuously override any thoughts that Michael and his siblings may have as to who is pictured. Rather, it is to provoke any distant family members with further knowledge or ancestral trees posted on ancestry to hopefully stumble on my blog post and come forward to corroborate or refute my speculations.
Note: This represents another reader-inspired post. While responding to a query from an American reader named Michael Bruck, whose surname is now spelled the way my family’s surname was once spelled, I learned his family’s surname was originally Brück, with two dots over the “u.” I helped this reader confirm family rumors and identify and track down pictures of some of his family members who were victims of the Holocaust.
I was recently contacted by an American gentleman from Virginia named Michael Bruck asking whether I have any Brucks in my family tree from a spa town named Bad Kreuznach in the west German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, located about 50 miles west-southwest of Frankfurt, Germany. (Figure 1) I explained to Michael that most of my family originated from Silesia, the historical region of Central Europe that now lies mostly in Poland, with small parts in the Czech Republic and Germany. I further added that while I have sometimes come across Brucks in my ancestral research who lived in the western part of Germany, I have never found any direct connection between them and my family.
I expected my response to be the end of our exchange. However, Michael provided additional information in his initial email that caused me to do some further investigation. He mentioned that his grandfather Arthur Bruck had been born in Bad Kreuznach in the late 19th century and had immigrated to the United States in the early 20th century. Most intriguingly, Michael mentioned that his grandfather Arthur had an unnamed brother who was a judge who disappeared in the 1930’s during the Nazi era; Arthur Bruck apparently never spoke of this brother to his family, ergo his name and fate were unknown to them.
With this scant information, I set out to see what, if anything, I could learn about Michael’s German ancestors. In the process, I made a few discoveries specific to Michael’s ancestors, but more interestingly on a historical level I made a surprising discovery that I will tell readers about in this post.
Certain of Michael’s family’s connection to Bad Kreuznach, I began by searching in ancestry.com for his grandfather Arthur Bruck. I immediately discovered Arthur’s “Declaration of Intention” to become a citizen of the United States and renounce his allegiance and fidelity to The German Empire. (Figure 2) This document is dated the 25th of May 1925 and confirms he was born in Kreuznach, Germany on the 11th of March 1885; his surname is incorrectly spelled “Bruch.” His 1928 “Petition for Naturalization” shows his surname correctly spelled. (Figure 3)
His wife’s name is given as “Ella” on the 1925 Declaration of Intention form. A New York State Marriage Extract confirms that Arthur and Ella Gerber got married on the 12th of January 1919 in Manhattan. (Figure 4) The 1920 (Figure 5) and 1940 (Figure 6) U.S. Federal Censuses show them living together in New York (Bronx and Manhattan) with their son, Charles Bruck, Michael’s father. The recently released 1950 U.S. Federal Census (Figure 7) expectedly shows that Charles is no longer living with his parents, but that Ella’s sister, Bertha G. Schack, is now living with Arthur and Ella in Los Angeles.
A 1913 Hamburg Passenger List confirms that Arthur Brück departed Hamburg, Germany on the 7th of August 1913, and was ledig, single, at the time. (Figures 8a-b) Of all the documents I found on ancestry, this is the first one showing Arthur’s surname with an umlaut over the “u,” obviously the way the surname was spelled before his arrival in America.
For information, an umlaut is often thought of as the two dots over letters, usually vowels, in the German language. Referred to as a diacritic, a sign written above or below a letter, when discussing German umlauts, there are three in use within the alphabet including Ä, Ö, and Ü. Rather than implying an accent or emphasis, German umlauts are independent characters with variations that represent both long and short sounds. In the case of “Brück” the word would be spelled out as “Brueck.”
The spelling of Michael’s current surname is like the way my father formerly spelled his name in Germany. However, just like my family’s surname changed upon their arrival in America from “Bruck” to “Brook,” so too did Michael’s family’s transform, from “Brück” with an umlaut to “Bruck” without an umlaut. In both instances of our respective German surnames spelled with and without an umlaut, the word translates to “bridge.”
Neither Michael nor I know how long his Brück family was associated with Bad Kreuznach but a quick Wikipedia search reveals the spa town is most well-known for its medieval bridge dating from around 1300, the Alte Nahebrücke, which is one of the few remaining bridges in the world with standing structures on it. This is wild speculation on my part, but possibly his family adopted their surname because they owned a business along the bridge. In the case of my own family, which originally came from Hungary and was named “Perlhefter,” they became toll collectors in an Austrian town named Bruck an der Leitha, “Bridge on the Leitha,” on the Austro-Hungarian border. Upon their relocation to Vienna, Austria, the “Bruck” surname was adopted.
The California U.S. Index tells us that Michael’s grandfather died in Los Angeles on the 5th of November 1972. (Figure 9) The Find A Grave Index further informs us that Arthur Bruck is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, and even shows his headstone. (Figures 10a-b)
A particularly useful document found on ancestry for Arthur Brück was the so-called “Geneanet Community Tree Index.” (Figures 11a-b) It confirms the original spelling of Arthur’s surname and provides the names and vital data of his parents, siblings, and half-siblings. This was the first evidence I found that confirmed Arthur had a brother named Max Brück, Michael Bruck’s previously unnamed great-uncle, who was born in 1884 and died in 1942. A similar “Geneanet Community Tree Index” for Max Brück established he indeed was a victim of the Holocaust. (Figure 12)
As in the case of his younger brother, I uncovered numerous documents for Max Brück. Like my own uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck who was a German WWI veteran but was nevertheless hunted down by the Nazis, Max was also a veteran of The Great War. Multiple personnel registers from WWI record his name. (Figure 13)
Max’s “Geneanet Community Tree Index” (see Figure 12) indicates he was murdered in Auschwitz on the 16th of August 1942 at the age of 58. It also shows he was married to an Elsa Neumayer, born in 1890 in Munich, with whom he had three children; unlike her husband, Elsa survived the Holocaust and died at 103 years of age in Georgia. The oldest of Max and Elsa’s children, Eugen Kurt Brück (1920-1942), I found was also murdered in Auschwitz.
Knowing Max Brück and his oldest son Eugen were Holocaust victims, I turned to the Yad Vashem Victims’ Database and predictably found both listed. Periodically, a surviving family member will complete what is termed “A Page of Testimony” remembering their loved ones. In the case of Eugen Brück, two such testimonies were submitted to Yad Vashem, one by Eugen’s mother Elsa Brück (Figures 14a-b) and another by Eugen’s younger sister Hilda Ruth Nathan née Brück (1925-2018). (Figures 15a-b) Both testimonies include pictures of Eugen, which, in my limited experience, is unusual.
According to the Page of Testimony completed by Eugen’s mother, his places of residence during the war, euphemistically speaking, were Mondorf-les-Bains in Luxembourg; Gurs internment camp in southwestern France; and Les Milles, a transit and internment camp for Jews in Aix-en-Provence. As I discussed in Post 23, my beloved Aunt Susanne, also murdered in Auschwitz in September 1942, was likewise briefly detained in Camp des Milles on her final journey to Auschwitz. At the time Eugen’s mother submitted her testimony in 1971 she lived in Huntsville, Alabama.
After sharing my findings with Michael, he and his family sent me unidentified pictures found among their grandfather Arthur Bruck’s surviving papers. One of them is a picture-postcard mailed in around 1934 from Munich showing his brother Max’s three children, Eugen along with his two younger siblings, Werner Alexander Brück (1922-1936) and Hilda Ruth Brück (1925-2018). (Figures 16a-b) The elaborate postmark “Besucht die deutsche Siedlungsausstellung München 1934 (Juni bis Oktober),” “Visit the German settlement exhibition Munich 1934 (June to October),” suggests it was mailed in 1934, and the 6 Pfennig stamp of Paul von Hindenburg issued between 1933 and 1936 would seem to confirm this.
As a brief aside, according to German Wikipedia, the “German Settlement Exhibition” of 1934, presented shortly after the Nazi regime took power was “. . .part of an exemplary embodiment of the National Socialist idea of settlement. Within a very short time, 192 single-family houses with 34 different building types were built under the direction of housing consultant and architect Guido Harbers. The ensemble is self-contained and has numerous green areas in accordance with the garden city idea.”
I asked my German friend Peter Hanke, “The Wizard of Wolfsburg,” to translate the postcard. Though the handwriting was difficult for Peter to decipher, enough could be discerned to know the card was written by Max’s wife Elsa Brück to her sister- and brother-in-law, Selma Daniel née Brück and Albert Daniel, thanking them for sending candy to her children; all three of the children signed the postcard. The card was mailed to the corset factory in Saarbrücken owned by Albert Daniel.
Aware of the fact that Max’s daughter had submitted “A Page of Testimony” for her brother Eugen, I assumed she might also have completed one for her father. Further digging proved this was in fact the case, and likewise yielded a picture of Max Brück. (Figures 17a-b)
In Yad Vashem, I also discovered three personal documents attached to Max’s entry, including a Bestätigung, a confirmation, issued by the “Administration du Culte Israelite Luxembourg” dated the 15th of November 1948 acknowledging that Max Brück and Eugen Brück had both been deported to Auschwitz. (Figure 18) Both were on the same transport departing Drancy, France on the 14th of August 1942. The cause of Max Brück’s death is not given, but I assume he was gassed immediately upon his arrival in Auschwitz, which the “Geneanet Community Tree Index” stating he died on the 16th of August 1942 corroborates.
The cause of Eugen Brück’s death, which took place on the 23rd of September 1942, is stated as “Darmkatarrh bei Phlegmone.” According to Peter Hanke, “Darmkatarrh” is an obscure expression, that today might more appropriately be described as an “inflammatory bowel disease” or “purulent bowel disease.” According to Wikipedia, “A phlegmon is a localized area of acute inflammation of the soft tissues. It is a descriptive term which may be used for inflammation related to a bacterial infection or non-infectious causes (e.g. pancreatitis). Most commonly, it is used in contradistinction to a ‘walled-off’ pus-filled collection (abscess), although a phlegmon may progress to an abscess if untreated. A phlegmon can localize anywhere in the body. The Latin term phlegmōn is from the Ancient Greek (phlégō, ‘burn’).”
After learning of Eugen’s existence from the Geneanet Community Tree Index and his fate, I rechecked ancestry.com for additional documents. Astonishingly, I found his death certificate!! (Figures 19a-b)
Having never previously found such a document for a Jewish inmate murdered in Auschwitz, I asked Peter Hanke about this. Apparently, this is not unprecedented according to the information Peter sent me from the Arolsen Archives in a section entitled “Death register entry for deceased concentration camp prisoners,” which reads as follows:
“This document is officially known as a death register entry or death book entry. It is a form that was officially filled out not only for concentration camp prisoners but others as well. As a formal act that still applies today, deceased persons must be registered at a German registry office. Deceased concentration camp prisoners were therefore also supposed to be listed in a death register – though there were major differences here depending on the prisoners’ nationality and whether they were considered Jews. The form was basically identical in all camp and civil registry offices. This is why the entries for Spanish, German and Polish deceased prisoners from different concentration camps are similar. They differ only in their typeface and the handwriting of the respective registrars.”
The only death certificate I’ve previously found for an ancestor murdered in a concentration camp was from the Theresienstadt Ghetto. (Figure 20)
In closing I would make a few observations. Though Michael Bruck’s German relatives’ surname was originally spelled Brück with two dots over the “u” and are unrelated to my own family insofar as I know, helping Michael learn about his forefathers confirmed rumors he heard about growing up. The Geneanet Community Tree indices I found for Arthur and Max Brück allowed us to connect names with photographs. Personally speaking, finding pictures of one’s ancestors, particularly those who were victims of the Holocaust, makes a statement that these people once walked among us and are not forgotten. Without fail, whenever I help others learn about their ancestors, I too learn and come away with something and nothing is more important to me.
REFERENCE
“Mustersiedlung Ramersdorf.” German Wikipedia, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustersiedlung_Ramersdorf
